


You could set me free (but if you're going, go)

by whoopace_kosi



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, BAMF Tony Stark, I'm literally back on my bullshit you'd think I'd learn, Implied Stony - Freeform, Infinity Gauntlet, It doesn't have to be, Multi, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Thanos being a little bitch, but like, less than 6 hours later..., some of these people are just mentioned, theres a 7th infinity ston
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-17 23:32:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15472542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whoopace_kosi/pseuds/whoopace_kosi
Summary: What passes through the mind of the Mad Titan as he takes his dying breaths.





	You could set me free (but if you're going, go)

**Author's Note:**

> I literally just posted something else and I'm honestly awful but this has been sitting in my WIPs for a while so I just published it don't @ me.  
> I've managed to post twice today and none of them are what I'm supposed to be working on.  
> Also beware, I can't write emotion because I don't have any.

A series of visions pass through his head as Thanos lies down to die.

A woman, sobbing, tears running down her face as she clutches at the ashes of her fallen lover, already swirling away in the wind. _“Iridesa! My love, come back! I love you, please!”_ she wails, her face a mask of agony alike with everyone around her.

Her eyes met Thanos, burning and bright yellow, like the skin surrounding her. “ _You_ ,” she spat. _“I would rather die in poverty with my wife than live rich alone.”_ She rises, slowly, like a dead thing, and growls, _“But you didn’t give me that choice, did you? You thought you knew what was best for me?”_ She glares, and it feels more painful than any weapon could, and snarls, “ _How dare you steal her from me? Don’t you know that she was my whole world?”_

The world disintegrated around her, leaving her hateful glowing eyes last. A tiny seed of doubt enters the Titan’s stomach, a seed that blooms and snakes its leaves into his heart.

He sees Gamora, falling backwards, eyes glimmering with realization and betrayal and heartbreak, trained on himself.

There's Nebula, crying out as Gamora tore into her, both of them crying, all for the price of strength. A zero-sum game where the only winner was himself.

He sees Tony Stark, kneeling on Titan, defeated by all definitions, as the ash of his fallen teammates fluttered around him. He couldn’t see where Nebula was, and he wasn’t sure whether that was a blessing or a curse.

They were both quiet, Stark in grief, Thanos in careful monitoring, until Stark spoke up, “Are you happy? Did you get what you wanted?”  
Thanos didn’t know.

“Well,” Stark took a shuddering breath, alive only by hate and sorrow, clutching the place where Thanos had stabbed him. “I wouldn’t wait long, because I’m going to get him back.”

A clenched fist on a fallen battlefield. “ _Nobody_ messes with _my kid._ ”

The vision drifts away. An image of a little boy, begging alone on the streets clogs his mind.

“Please? Food? Anyone?” He begs, but among the millions wading in sadness and suffering, what is one more little boy?

_What is one more soul?_

Thanos thinks, _“Why are you begging? There’s plenty to eat.”_

The boy looks up with hooded eyes. “My mom- she- she was having open heart surgery when the Snap occured. The doctor, the nurse- everyone disappeared, and now she’s dead. Nobody else can take care of me, only her, and now she’s gone.”

The chasm grows in Thanos’ gut as the boy somberly drifts away, the light green marks on his face glowing dully.

The next woman is calmly sitting in the seat of an spacecraft, people screaming and running down the aisle.

“Oh, haven’t you heard? The pilots disintegrated, we’ll hit a planet in 20 seconds.”

She fixes Thanos with a hard look. “Did I even mean anything to you? How many lives did you take without permission?”

Thanos finds it very hard to scoff at a woman who is 6 seconds away from death.

“Murderer,” She hisses, and the plane collides with the ground.

His shoulders ache from all the death he’s caused, it’s too much. His mouth tastes like ash.

Nebula steps from the darkness, 19 years younger, followed by Gamora, grinning as she pulls her green-skinned sister along. He’s almost forgotten how lovely Nebula looked back then, the potential she had, both as a warrior and as a young woman. He’s forgotten how her face looked unmarred by scars and metal, and how _happy_ her eyes looked. She used to have joy, before he turned sister against sister. Her white hair falls in straight locks as she and Gamora skid to a stop before his feet, playfulness falling away. They go down on one knee, synchronized before him. He’s forgotten how long it was before they became insolent.

Their eyes blaze orange as they say in unison, in voices not their own, “These lives were not yours to take. You have upset the balance of natural order. You have created a vacuum in the fabric of Life.”

Nebula’s eyes burn orange  as she says savagely, “and Nature _hates_ a vacuum.”

He stares, chest heaving at his beloved daughters, whom he sacrificed to his own selfish desires. Gamora flickers with a pale orange aura, but Nebula glows fiercely purple,

“Why?” Thanos utters, straining against the ash in his throat, “Why are you doing this to me? I’ve fixed it. I’ve solved the problem.”

Nebula stands up. Gamora unsheathes a knife, the knife that he gave her so long ago to distract her from her planet losing half their people. Thinking back upon that memory, he pulls for the righteous feeling it usually inspires, but all he feels is grief and regret and _pain, endless endless_ pain.

Nebula grows 15 years in 15 seconds, and he face falls apart, and her arm falls out of the socket, and her leg gets left behind on an off step, but new limbs- metal ones,  replace them, and Thanos stays rooted in place.

Nebula presses a kiss to his cheek before slowly, agonizingly, across the Titan’s throat. Blood drips down his neck and onto his tunic, getting all over Thanos' arm.

"I wish it could've been different," Gamora says, a strange mournful tone to her voice.

Nebula whispers, "I don't."

They crumple to ash and Thanos doesn’t see anything anymore.

His eyes close, and they never open again.

* * *

 

The spaceship is dubbed “ _The Survivors_ ,” and it bumps and creaks as it lands on planet Titan, desolate as ever.

The name is ironic because Tony Stark feels like anything but.

It’s been a few years since the Snap, which is far too many days of not sleeping, and May Parker sobbing on the phone, of lying on an empty bed, _I’m sorry_ running through his head like a broken record, far too many days of no Pepper, no Happy, and no _Peter._

Thanos’ body lays on the ground, dead. _Good_ , Tony thinks, _or I would’ve had to kill him myself,_ and Tony doesn’t know if he would stop at killing the Titan.

It’s a bit surreal, being back in the place where Peter died. He thought he would dissolve into a panic attack the second he stepped foot on it, but while he can feel the licks of panic gripping the edge of his conscious, he keeps his mind firmly in the present, and on the huge risk they’re about to take.

Behind him, Steve Rogers steps out, awkwardly fumbling about in the lower gravity. They’re not the same as they were Before, but Tony knows that at the end of the day, Steve won’t let him die, and neither will Tony. And that's enough.

Natasha helps out the Captain, almost as if she’s been walking on other planets her whole life.

Carol Danvers, who Tony barely knows, but thinks he could be chill with, lightly strokes her glove, where the surprize seventh Infinity Stone, the Ego stone, rests on her middle finger, which Tony thinks is mildly funny.

Apparently, there’s been 7 stones the whole time, but the Ego stone was so hush-hush that even Thanos didn’t know about it

Thor delicately picks up the Gauntlet, for a all-powerful murder weapon, he treats it like jewelry.

They leave Nebula to her father’s body, to do with as she pleases.

When they walk away Tony thinks he hears the _shink_ of a sheathe releasing it’s weapon. He doesn’t look back, though he feels, rather than sees, Steve turn around.

* * *

It takes about an hour for the whole process to finish, including a lot of chanting in an alien language from Carol that Thor seems to understand, but then again, he did say he had a ‘heartwarming discussion’ with a talking tree, so who knows if he’s just off his rocker.

He certainly wouldn’t be the first Avenger to go insane.

Then again, he built ‘The Survivors’ with a talking racoon, so it’s fair to say that anything is possible.

And hour seems like a short time to wait, but it feels like an eternity as he thinks of the people he’ll be able to see in a short time.

Tony feels a bit like an idiot, sitting around while Carol does all of the heavy lifting, but… he has to know.

They debated a lot about the whole team going to Titan, but if Thanos had been alive, they’d have needed all the firepower they had.

Bruce jumps when dust starts swirling through the air. As it flutters through Tony’s fingertips, he realizes that it’s not space dust, it’s _ash_.

It’s _ash_ and it might be a _person_ in a few minutes.

Suddenly, inexplicably, Tony feels all of his walls and barriers break down, and he embarrasses himself in the _worst_ way and breaks down sobbing, falling sideways hard into Steve, who makes an oomph of surprise when he catches him. But nobody makes fun of him, or avoids his gaze when his eyes land on them.

A loud exclamation makes him look up sharply. A guardian - _Drax,_ he remembers, is standing before Carol, his arms still reforming.   
Six feet away from him, the guardian with the weird feeler things reforms, before falling to her knees.

Carol shudders with the force of the power only she can feel. For once, Tony feels glad that the whole plan isn’t riding on him. He feels- _happy,_ he feels joy, he feels like it’s Christmas morning and you know you’re about to be given the greatest present ever, he feels giddy and drunk because soon enough _Peter_ will be here.

Quill appears in another cloud of ash, and he is immediately gathered into the group hug the aforementioned racoon is gathering the Guardians into.

Strange appears, floating on his cape, face drawn into a smug expression, as if he knew this would happen. The bastard.

“Good job, Stark. Knew you’d figure it out.”

“Asshole,” Tony grins.

Then, a few feet away, a stirring of ash forms a pair of legs in the familiar red-blue-gold design of the Iron Spider Suit, and he practically elbows Steve in the face to get over to them.

He watches Peter’s body reform from ash, like someone played out Peter’s death in reverse, and finally, his face, his _innocent, sweet face_ reforms, and Peter is _alive,_ and awake and panicked and confused, but he sees Tony’s face and calms down.

The emotion wells up in Tony and he can’t even speak, can barely breathe, and he’s just so damn _happy,_ because Peter is _back,_ and he’s waited almost 4 _years_ for this, and he’s _here._

Peter is saying something, but Tony can’t hear him over the rushing in his head, and he clutches Peter to himself, taking in deep breaths of Peter’s awkward-boy shampoo. He knows that he’s crying, and it’s ugly-crying and Steve is _definitely_ staring at him and so are the rest of the Avengers but he doesn’t _care_ because _Peter is here he’s alive he’s safe._

And Peter is gazing up at him with wide eyes, and his mouth purses to ask, in that innocent little voice, “Mr. Stark? Are you ok?” but Tony can’t hear him because Tony’s ears are swelling with emotion that he doesn’t have time to analyse. He chuckles and answers, “I’m ok now, kiddo. I’m ok.”

Peter grins sleepily and says, “Ok, Mr. Stark.”

And Carol is still shuddering with the power washing over her, undoing all the death that she can, and people (and things) will try to threaten the earth again, and there will be a lot of talking to do in the very near future, but for now, Tony holds Peter to him and blocks out the world because _Peter is back_. And that makes those thoughts much easier to bear, because with Peter by him Tony feels like he can do anything.

And so Tony walks Peter over to the others, who watch him carefully, and his chest feels full to bursting when he says, “Avengers, this is Spider-Man, and he’s your newest recruit.”

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Can you tell how I lost my mind toward the end  
> Go ahead an leave some Kudos bc they're free and only take like 2 seconds and i'm really tired.  
> ALSo leave a comment because I like talking and I'll respond to you and I'm a slut for constructive criticism.  
> Check out my tumblr @kosiso and scream with me about Infinity War, it'll be dope.


End file.
